the mightiest of the mighty.

​Back in what I recall as the heyday of hurdling, the period when Night Nurse, possibly the greatest ever Champion hurdler, Monksfield, Birds Nest, perhaps the best horse never to win a Champion Hurdle, battled time and time again for supremacy, at a time when Golden Cygnet threatened to usurp the whole lot of them, with the likes of Comedy of Errors, Lanzarote and Bula waiting in the wings, there was an old horse, an old horse that Timeform thought deserving of a squiggle against his name, at least for a short time. His name was Sea Pigeon, the best dual-purpose horse of my lifetime.
He was bred, of course, to win a Derby, being by Sea Bird, the Derby winner. I believe after winning at Ascot as a two-year-old, ridden by none other than Lester Piggott, he himself was ante-post favourite for the following year’s Derby. As a three-year-old he was only good enough to finish fourth in the Dante, seventh in the Derby and fourth in the Prince of Wales at Royal Ascot. He was immature, in need of time. So when an offer came for him, Jeremy Tree advised his owner to sell. I wonder if John Hay Whitney ever regretted selling a horse that went on to win 16 races on the flat and 21 as a hurdler? Indeed, how many times has someone sold on a horse that went on to win a total of 37 races and who became a true peoples horse?
Although he won his first four starts over hurdles, Sea Pigeon was very much a slow burner. He didn’t, for example, win on the flat until he was in his seventh year, though he started by winning the Chester Cup, which he won again as an eight-year-old.
Back then it was possible for a horse of Sea Pigeon’s class to win races like the Chester Cup, Vaux Brewers Gold Tankard, a major race in the seventies, the sort of race Redcar should make an effort to return to the calendar, and still be eligible to run in amateur races. Sea Pigeon won the Moet & Chandon Silver Magnum at Epsom under trainer’s son, and now star trainer himself, Tim Easterby. On the flat his greatest achievement was in lumping 10st to victory in the Ebor, worth 17-grand in 1979, under the guidance of Jonjo O’Neill, who with the race won dropped his hands and nearly got chinned. Don’t bother trying to look the race up on YouTube as you’ll not find it. Unbelievably I.T.V. technicians were on strike and the race was never broadcast, and not even recorded. One of the truly great performances seen on a racecourse and witnessed only by the privileged few to attend the races that day.
The one race on the flat that always proved beyond the great horse was the Northumberland Plate as the final two furlongs really stretched his stamina reserves and diluted his greatest weapon, his turn of foot.
Of course, that famed turn of foot, a prized asset that he never really lost even as a horse nearing his teens, was never enough to win him a Champion Hurdle when at his prime. He was fourth in 1977, second in 1978, second again in 1979. Cheltenham, some said, was just not his lucky racecourse. Yet as a ten-year-old he defeated his old foe Monksfield with the greatest of ease, taking up the running before the last hurdle as he was travelling with so much gusto.
Of course it was unheard-of for an eleven-year-old to defend his crown, even if the race did not have a horse of Monksfield’s class in it. Very few jockeys would be confident of winning a championship race on a horse as old and with as many miles on the clock as Sea Pigeon. So how did John Francome have the steely nerve and confidence to come to the last in 1980 full of running and take a pull halfway up that final hill? How could he be so certain the old horse still had that turn of foot? How we held our breath and thought Francome too cocky for going on when plainly he had the race in the palm of his hand? Of course, when he suggested to Sea Pigeon it was time to accelerate, the ten-year-old obeyed him in spades. It was, as we now know, the last race he ever won, the last of 37. Will we ever see his likes again?
Yes, I know there has been, perhaps, better horses since him. Altior, Sprinter Sacre, Kauto, Denman, Dessie, etc. But no more inspiring hurdler. Not even Istabraq, I would suggest. Both Jonjo and John Francome rate Sea Pigeon the best they rode and that in itself is some statement.
Oh, and given the debate on the whip it is useful to recall that Sea Pigeon detested being struck with the whip and in none of his 37 victories was it used as enforcer on him and his career spanned nine years and many times he humped big weights in competitive handicaps and never lost the will to win.
He lived, as did his old pal Night Nurse, into his early thirties and they are buried next to one another at Peter Easterby’s stables at Habton. When Alastair Down suggested to Easterby that the two horses had lived good lives, his reply elevated Peter Easterby in my estimation. ‘Because of them, Alastair, we lived better lives’. To racing folk, horses never die, they merely rest in the memory.